Feels Like Home (Southern Bride 5)

Nick started for the door.

“Hey, Nick?”

He glanced back at me. “Yeah?”

“Thanks for having my back. I appreciate it.”

With a tip of his cowboy hat, he replied, “It was my pleasure. I never did like that little fucker.”

He opened the door and then stepped outside. When the door clicked shut, Drake said, “I changed my mind. I like him.”

I looked down at my red knuckles and frowned. “Yeah, me too.”

Bristol

SCANNING THE TEA room once more, I attempted to settle my rattled nerves.

“Bristol?”

I turned to see Mindy holding out a glass for me.

“Here, drink this.”

“What is it?” I asked as I looked at what appeared to be iced tea.

“Iced tea.”

With a smile, I accepted it and took a long drink. Then started coughing.

“With whiskey in it,” she added.

“Christ Almighty, Mindy! What in the hell?”

She shrugged. “I’m sorry, but you need it. If you stress any more, you’re going to explode. Everything is going to be fine. She’s going to love everything. Stop worrying.”

I headed over to the counter and set the spiked tea down. Then lied through my teeth.

“I’m not worried at all.”

She lifted her brow.

“Fine, I’m a little bit worried,” I said, “but I also can’t stop thinking about Saturday night. What in the world was Anson thinking?”

She tilted her head and looked at me. “From what Drake told me yesterday, Josh insulted you in a big way. Then egged Anson on. So, in a way, he was defending your honor.”

My mouth dropped open. “Defending my honor? By making a scene and then…and then saying what he said? It made me feel so dirty. Like I’d done something wrong.”

“Or is your own guilt making you feel that way?”

“Excuse me?” I asked. “What do you mean, my own guilt?”

Mindy exhaled and then sat down on the stool behind the check-in counter.

“It’s time to get real here, Bri. Why did you date Josh in the first place? When he first asked you out, you were determined not to go out with him. He was Anson’s best friend in high school. Your friend. You said you didn’t feel that way about him. What changed?”

I swallowed hard as I stared at her. “We…we grew closer, I guess. I spent a lot of time with him.”

She nodded. “And it had nothing to do with the fact that Josh mentioned Anson was dating some up-and-coming country singer. That they had been photographed together a few times. If my memory serves me correctly, Josh seemed to feed you a lot of information about Anson.”

With a frown, I looked away. Josh had indeed mentioned that Anson might be dating someone, and I had looked it up. Both Anson’s manager and the girl herself denied the rumors. What was her name again?

I shook my head to erase the thought. It didn’t matter know.

“Fine,” I admitted, “I dated Josh for all the wrong reasons.”

“You don’t say?” Mindy countered.

She had been so angry with me when I told her I was going to go out on a date…a real date with Josh. I had never shared my feelings about Josh like I had Anson.

“When I was with Josh, I felt…”

“You felt what?” she asked softly.

I blinked rapidly to keep my tears at bay. “I felt alive again. And as pathetic as this makes me sound, he made me feel like I was with Anson again, and there were so many times when I was with him that I closed my eyes and pretended…”

I stopped talking and let out a slow breath. “It doesn’t matter. The past is the past and even if I do regret dating Josh—which yes, a part of me does—I needed to move on, even if I did it in a not-so-healthy way.”

She smiled slightly and reached for my hand across the counter. With a squeeze, she said, “If y’all are meant to be together, you will be. You have to leave it up to faith.”

Throwing up my hands, I said, “Ugh. There’s that word again! None of this matters, right now, what matters is Annie liking what she sees—and tastes—today.”

“She will, there isn’t a doubt in my mind,” Mindy said with a wide smile.

The tea room was abuzz with women talking over women. Laughter, a bit of gossip here and there. A smiling Annie Foster took it all in. She lifted her teacup and drank the lavender tea she had requested. It was made from the lavender grown on my folks’ farm, and I had painstakingly worked on the recipe for almost two years before I finally got it exactly right.

As she set her teacup down and laughed at something Pearl said, I released the breath I had been holding in. I gave Anna a nod, letting her know the room was hers to watch for a few moments, and headed into the kitchen to check on the quiche Terry had put in earlier.